The U.S. Department of Justice told the Supreme Court on Oct. 10 that it no longer considers the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, unconstitutional, while urging the court to uphold the health care law.
The official letter states, “The Department of Justice has reconsidered the government’s position in these cases in light of changes in the executive branch. The purpose of this letter is to inform the Court that the United States is no longer complying with the conclusions in the previously submitted federal respondents’ briefs.”
The related development came after the completion of the U.S. government transition, when the then-Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to strike down the Obamacare bill on the grounds that the bill’s “individual mandate” was unconstitutional.
The case was previously brought to the Supreme Court by California and other Democratic states after a lower court ruled that Obamacare’s main purpose was unconstitutional. Prior to that, the parties had presented oral arguments to the Supreme Court.
In the letter, Biden administration officials detailed the Democratic Party’s position and told the court that it believed the mandate was constitutional.
Prior to that, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to hold that the individual mandate provision of the original bill was unconstitutional, and that the individual mandate provision of the main funding mechanism, the “buy health insurance or pay a fine,” had been eliminated by Congress, making the entire law unenforceable.
Deputy U.S. Attorney General Edwin K. Kneedler said in a statement that “the United States believes that Congress’ decision to reduce payments to zero did not convert the provisions of Section 5000A from a provision providing a constitutional option to an unconstitutional practice of maintaining coverage.”
He added that if the court finds the mandate unconstitutional, the court should find that “the provision is severable from the rest of the ACA.”
He asserted that “the inference of severability cannot be overcome here, especially since the remaining ACA provisions were left in place while Congress reduced the amount of the shared responsibility payment program under Section 5000A to zero in 2017.”
Niederer told the court that the department did not request a supplemental briefing.
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